The Internet has made it convenient for merchants to sell products and provide customer service on-line. For example, many merchants have established World Wide Web sites containing on-line catalogs of their products. With a Web browser, customers can access such a Web site to view images of the products and to obtain related product information. If a customer is interested in a product contained in the on-line catalog, the customer can place a telephone call to a customer service representative at the merchant. The customer service representative can provide the customer with product information and can take orders for products. An important aspect of this type of transaction is that the customer can remain on-line, so that the customer service representative can direct the customer to particular portions of the on-line catalog. If the customer service representative is provided with a suitable connection to the merchant's Web server, the customer service representative can actively control which portions of the catalog are displayed on the customer's computer. The customer service representative can use this feature to make a sales presentation to the customer.
Sometimes a customer service representative is not available to accept a telephone call from the customer. As a result, the customer must wait on hold until a representative is available. The Instant Answer.TM. service available from AT&T alleviates some of the difficulties associated with this situation. Using the Instant Answer.TM. service, a customer who is browsing an on-line catalog can click on a "call me" button in the on-line catalog when the customer wishes to speak to a customer service representative. Selecting the call me button alerts the merchant that the customer should be called by the next available customer service representative. If no customer service representative is currently available, the merchant's Web server can transmit a message to the customer's computer to let the customer know that all representatives are busy. A message might also be transmitted that indicates in realtime the estimated time remaining before a customer service representative will be available.
While the customer is waiting for a customer service representative from the merchant to call, the customer may wish to continue to browse the Internet. In particular, the customer may wish to access Web sites unrelated to the merchant's on-line catalog. However, when the customer accesses another Web site, the data communications link between the customer's computer and the merchant's server is typically broken. As a result, after the merchant's customer service representative has called the customer, the customer service representative must wait while the customer attempts to reestablish a data communications link between the customer's computer and the merchant's Web site.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a way in which to notify a customer that a customer service representative is available and to facilitate the process of establishing a data communications link with the representative.